Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign kickoff rally on Saturday in Philadelphia.

President Donald Trump is heading for a “Make America Great Again” rally in Pennsylvania on Monday night, aiming to pump up supporters in one of the states that clinched the White House for him just two days after Joe Biden attacked him there.

Trump’s Montoursville, Pa., event follows on the heels of Biden’s Philadelphia rally on Saturday, where the former vice president sought to promote himself as a uniter of the country even as he launched a broadside against Trump.

Speaking at an outdoor rally just steps from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Biden said “politics is pulling us apart. It’s ripping this country apart at the seams. Our politicians, our politics today, traffics in division, and our president is the divider in chief.”

Biden said America is at its best when acting as “one America,” and drew on his years of working with Democrats and Republicans alike as a senator and as Barack Obama’s vice president. “I can do that again, with your help,” he told a cheering crowd.

But even as Biden said, “Let’s stop fighting and start fixing,” he harked back to his experience with Obama and said it was the former president who passed on a good economy to Trump. That economy, Biden said, “was given to him, just like he’s inherited everything else in his life.”

The rally was Biden’s second appearance in less than a month in the state where he was raised and that shares a border with Delaware, which Biden represented in the U.S. Senate for 36 years. It’s a sign of the investment the former vice president is making in the Keystone State, expected to play a major role in the 2020 decision, as it did in 2016.

Biden spoke of the need for what he called a clean-energy revolution without costing job growth, promoted free community college and said the U.S. needs an economy “that rewards work, not just wealth.” He has in the past said Trump’s tax cuts should be rolled back to help pay for some of his proposals.

Trump has homed in on Biden as a competitor, noting Pennsylvania’s record-low unemployment and charging that China would rather negotiate with the former vice president “or one of the very weak Democrats” who hope to win the presidency.

State Republicans are aggressively targeting Biden as well.

“While Joe Biden has emerged as the front runner in a crowded field of 2020 Democrat presidential contenders, the more he continues to re-introduce himself to the American public— and Pennsylvania in particular — the more they will see he offers nothing for them but a record dearth of any meaningful success and no real vision for the future,” said Republican Party of Pennsylvania Chairman Val DiGiorgio in a statement.

When accounting for tariffs on imported Chinese materials and tariffs related to an anti-dumping ruling involving Minnesota-based quartz company Cambria, Skalish estimates his company will be asked to shell out about $2 million.

Outside, holding a Trump banner, Valerie Biancaniello of Broomall, Pa., said she didn’t believe polls and didn’t understand “how anyone can not be for Trump.” She credited him with helping Pennsylvania’s jobless rate hit a low of 3.9% in March and said, “I want to make sure that socialism doesn’t take over our government.”

J. Wesley Leckrone, an associate professor at Widener University in Chester, Pa., says Biden has a “real shot” at winning Pennsylvania in the general election if he is the Democrats’ nominee.

“Democrats are very energized against the president and are going to show up no matter what,” says Leckrone, who notes Democrats outnumber Republicans in Pennsylvania by about 800,000. Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania in 2016, making him the first Republican to win that state since 1988.

Trump’s rally Monday night is in Lycoming County, which supported him over Clinton by nearly 45 points in 2016.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary is scheduled for April 28 of next year.

Robert
Schroeder

Robert Schroeder is the White House reporter for MarketWatch. Follow him on Twitter @mktwrobs.

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